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HOBBIES

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 28, 1877

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 50, No. 1.

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HOBBIES

By Editor

It is the boast of some papers now-a-days, that they are free from hobbies. They flaunt this in the face of the reader as a claim for his patronage. Judging from the tone of these papers we conclude they mean by this that they have no burden to attack the hoary-headed errors and superstitions of the day, and will not disturb the people in their theological repose. So, carrying the favor of all denominations, and seeking the amiable side of all classes, they fill their columns with a sort of namby-pamby matter that a man might read a thousand years and know no better what he believed at the end of that time than at the beginning.
This is not what the present age of the world calls for. There are truths for this time clearly developed, sharp and well defined, to which the people must be aroused or perish. In such truths as these the REVIEW undertakes to deal. It will give the trumpet no uncertain sound. Men may call these truths hobbies if they will, but that will not close the eyes of this paper to their importance, nor deter it from doing its duty in promulgating them.
It is sometimes a very convenient way for people who wish to avoid unwelcome light, to cry “Hobby?” and plunge off into the darkness, just as their batrachian brethren dive beneath the flags and reeds of their little pool, at the disturbance of some approaching footstep.
It is no new cry. Every reformation, and every reformer, has been met with it. Hobby, said his enemies to John Huss. So said they to Luther, Zwingle, Tyndale, Cranmer, the Wesleys, and every one who has found it necessary to rudely rouse a sin-benighted, slumber-loving, drowsy church and world; and so it will be so long as passing years bring up to every age its peculiar present truth, which will rouse up some honest hearts to be its earnest defenders.
Upon such hobbies as the Sabbath of the living God, the second advent, life through Christ, Spiritual gifts, the closing messages, the sanctuary, and many others, the REVIEW is firmly seated. Heaven mercifully grant it a quiet death and decent burial, before it shall come to have such emasculated ideas of the gospel as to make its boast that it has nothing to present which men may attempt to stigmatize as hobbies. Rather let it put spurs to its hobbies and ride them right and left through all the land till every honest heart is lassoed to its saddle-bows.